The manual loading and unloading of goods from a transport, such as hand truck, is a common cause of back injury. Operators load a hand truck by lifting goods and placing them on the hand truck, starting at the lowest level of the hand truck, and continuing until the hand truck is full. After the goods are moved to an unloading location, the operator manually unloads the hand truck, starting from the top and working down as the level of the goods reduces. The removal and addition of the lowest items places the largest amount of strain on the back of an operator. The repetitive nature of the movement further intensifies the problem.
Delivery personnel in the beverage industry are particularly susceptible to back injuries. A typical delivery person manually loads a hand truck several times a day from bottom to top with cases of beverages to create a stack. The stack is delivered to dispenser machines or vendors, and the delivery person manually unloads each of the cases from the stack. Not only is loading and unloading lower level beverage cases difficult, it also places increased strain on the back of the operator, when compared to higher level beverage cases.
Many beverage delivery personnel utilize support belts worn around the waist to provide back support during lifting. Although the belts may support some of the strain placed upon the back, the belts do not alleviate the strain caused by leaning to low positions to load or unload beverage cases.
Thus, there exists a need for a more efficient, safer way of loading and unloading stacks of beverage cases and stacks of other items onto and from a transport so that an operator does not have to stoop to the lower positions to load and unload the transport. Preferably, such transport would be easy to use, and relatively inexpensive to manufacture.